Jack - Take it to the High Side

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

At least 18 Trump administration officials used an unsecured Signal chat to discuss real-time attacks on Houthi militants in Yemen earlier this month as investigative journalist for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to the group.The Department of Justice is drastically changing their policy of prosecuting crimes in the United States prior to deportation.The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations. This shift could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists.Alina Habba was sworn in Friday as the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.Plus listener questions.Questions for the pod? Questions from Listeners Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

At least 18 Trump administration officials use of an unsecured signal chat to discuss real-time attacks on Houthi militants in Yemen earlier this month as investigative journalist for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to the group. The Department of Justice is drastically changing their policy of prosecuting crimes in the United States prior to deportation. The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations in a shift that could undermine law enforcement's ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government

extremists. And to add insult to injury, Alina Habba was sworn in Friday as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. This is Unjustified. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Unjustified. It's Sunday, March 30th. Is that right? Do I have that right? Yeah, 2025. It's March 30th already. Wow. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. And Alison, that last thing you mentioned there, that is fully unjustified. It is. I always like it's the heart of unjustified. It's absolutely unbelievable. I mean, it's, it's even more unjustified than Ed Martin.

Yeah. Yeah, for real. This, I mean, well, we'll get to the, I'll have my chance to tee up on this one when we get to the story, but wow, holy cow. Can't wait. All right, but in the meantime, Andy, I had the distinct honor of getting to talk to our good friend Pete Strzok about Signalgate.

We did that on a bonus episode of Clean Up on Isle 45. He has not shaved since election day and his beard is mighty. I don't know if you've seen him, but it's impressive. I have not, but I'm imagining like a full on David Letterman sort of thing. Yeah. But more like salt and pepper. It's, it's, it's majestic. But aside from that, I got to talk to him about this and now I want to talk to you

about it, I want to cover the Department of Justice aspect or complete lack thereof of this signal gate with you here on Justified. As most of the world has heard by now in a, what I can only describe as madcap breach of national defense information. Although, you know, it doesn't feel like madcap goes with a breach of national defense information, but it was Keystone cops. It really was. I think with this crowd, it does. I but it was Keystone cops. It really was. I think with this crowd, it does. I think Madcap is full on applicable to this crowd. Yeah. So in this Madcap breach, by the way, which no writers room in Hollywood would believe all of the nation's top national security leaders gathered in a commercial messaging

app to discuss active, highly classified military plans and operations. And they did not even notice that one of the nation's best investigative journalists had inadvertently been invited to join them. So let's talk about this because I think I liked Stephen Colbert's take the day that this happened. That night he got on television. Everyone at the Department of Justice and the press secretary, Caroline Levitt and Pete Hegseth, they're all saying that somehow, Mike Waltz is even saying, somehow this lefty pinko journalist from the Atlantic must have schemed his way into this chat. And Stephen Colbert was like, so if you hate this guy so much, that's even worse. It's really bad that you

were talking and giving this Marxist swamp creature, a journalist, all of this national defense information. But you know, what are your top line thoughts on this? There are so many levels to this. It's hard to pick out which part is the most ludicrous, the most dangerous, the worst indicator of just the rank and competence. And I should also say arrogance of the people involved here. But let's start from the beginning. This is what I love so much about this podcast is like I have an opportunity

to actually explain things in a way that I can never do on CNN, because you have your wicked time limits there. But all right. So first of all, many of the things in that text exchange were absolutely classified under any reasonable definition of classified. It's not even debatable. First year national security or intelligence community, people with a top secret clearance,

you have to go through all kinds of training and watch these ridiculous videos and get briefed by people like, even with just having gone through that very minimal kind of first level experience. If you'd asked any one of them, given them the facts scenario here, they would have said absolutely this is classified, which means it can only be discussed in a classified system, be that a VoIP system, voice system that's provided by the government, or in an email exchange over what we call the high side,

in which you can do top secret or secret level emails, or face-to-face, a conversation that takes place in a SCIF. And a SCIF of course is an acronym for Secured Compartmentalized Information Facility. It is the only place, it's the only space that is officially authorized to contain top secret material and in which you can have top secret conversations about things. There's all kinds of, you know, they, they cost millions of dollars to build. A skiff could be something as small as a tiny little closet.

It could be something as big as the entire floor of a building. If you have a top secret workforce, folks that are engaging and transacting on top secret material all day long, you have to be in a skiff to have a computer system on the high side that has access to top secret networks. And I should say, you know, the physical requirements of working in a skiff are kind of the bane of the existence of anyone in the, any regular Joe who works in the intelligence community, because you spend half your life jumping in the car

on the weekends, in the middle of the night, somebody's birthday party, whatever, and driving back into the office so you can sit down and read one email that someone tells you, oh my God, there's a note, there's a cable you must see right now. So you go in and do it. The only people that don't have to do that are like cabinet level secretaries. They are the most privileged beings in the entire government. They each have a security specialist, communication specialists and security people that travel with them wherever they go,

in the car, on the plane, domestically, foreign, whatever. That's what I wanted to ask you about. Because you and I talked about this when Biden was being investigated for missing unclassified documents. You're like, look, you travel a lot. You walk around. It's not unheard of that the classified document could end up in an office or a drawer or a desk or something and you don't know about it. But everybody has a team like these high level.

That's right. Have a team that follow them around. And so when I when I heard about this, my first thought was since Witkoff was in Russia and Tulsi Gabbard was she doesn't even remember where Right, but out of the country. I thought of you and you telling me and you know talking to me about Your knowledge of of there's usually a team following those people around what happened to this team? Wouldn't have somebody been like, what are you texting? What are you doing? They must not have known I don't know but it's it's bizarre to me it it should be bizarre to you because it is bizarre it's you know these people have or can have if they request it skiffs built into their homes in the basement they'll

bring a construction firm in and they'll actually turn your basement part of it into a skiff did you have have one? I did not. So you had to drive in. Yeah, yeah, for sure. They have security people, 24-7. Those people can maintain the classified information on their person in an approved lock bag in the middle of the night as they sit in a car out in front of your house or whatever they're doing.

They have special, special, super duper secret government smartphones that are approved to access the high side from a smartphone, which is like amazing. So they had a lot of options, but instead they chose to have this substantive national security conversation on Signal. So they could disappear the messages. Yeah.

It's just, again, like total incompetence, complete failure to be aware of even their own agencies that they now lead each have policies about this. I loved it when they read the DNI's guidelines about classification to her in the hearing this week. That was a great moment. And I'll give you a perfect example. If you go back and read the text, the person, it is possible that Mike Waltz, who I'm not trying to let off the hook here, but just to be fair, it's possible that when he started, when he convened this group, he intended it, he intended for it to only be a discussion of logistics, like

we should plan to meet at this time and this place to discuss that thing, you know, that sort of thing. The person in the conversation that really injected substance, and I would say classified substance into the conversation was JD Vance. And Hegseth, right? Well, first JD Vance. Vance opens it up by saying, by having a conversation that is basically qualifies

as U.S. foreign policy plans and intentions. When he starts talking about Europe and making them pay for the strike and all that kind of stuff, that counts as foreign policy plans and intentions when he starts talking about Europe and making them pay for the strike and all that kind of stuff. That counts as foreign policy plans and intentions. And that is a minimum classified secret. And from there, you know, of course, Peg Seth responds with his absurdly detailed, uh, tick-tock of exactly how, um, exactly how the attack, the strike

is going to go down, all of which is by any estimation, top secret requires top secret clearance. So yeah, there's no argument that the substance of this conversation was classified in many different ways and not a single one of the 18 luminaries on this conversation ever thought to say, hey, hold on a second,

maybe we should flip this over to the high side. That's something that people in the IC tell each other all the time. Somebody calls you and asks you a question. Let's flip it to the high side. You might say, hey, do you have a secure phone? Let me call you back on that. Cause just let's just be careful.

You know, there's no shame in saying that. It's not like an accusation or anything, but it didn't happen here. Yeah, no, it absolutely didn't happen here. And our good friend, Brian Greer, who my, my may or may not have some, you know, experience with classified information being the chief of staff to general counsel at the CIA and all that. Those guys do nothing on the low side. They live on the high side. They wouldn't send you their grocery list unless it was on the high side. No. So he pointed out, and I thought very rightfully so,

that the text message that was sent about the missile guy whose girlfriend had just walked into his building, he said, this immediately stands out to me as something that would be information from a confidential human source. Absolutely could be. On the ground, right? Yeah.

And sure enough, the Wall Street Journal reported now Israel, who's been burned by Donald Trump on intelligence leaks in the past. Couple times. A couple times. The Wall Street Journal reports Israel provided sensitive intelligence from a human source in Yemen on a key Houthi military operative targeted in an attack described by National Security Advisor Mike Walz in the signal chat.

This is after the strikes began. Obviously, it says here with senior Trump officials, this is according to two US officials. The missile expert had been seen entering his girlfriend's building, which had been destroyed. That was intelligence from a human source in Yemen. And Israel is big mad. As well they should be. And again, every time we show this level of incompetence and recklessness with national security material, we run that risk of sending a message, a very clear message to our allies, that's a shrinking list probably these days, that we can't handle their stuff responsibly, which means we'll get less of it, which means we are by definition less safe.

And I should say, I'm not surprised brian really focused on this because this is the kind of thing that makes like cia people and fbi people crazy even if this piece of information didn't come from a human source. It is likely that the enemy reading these texts which you know they have. which you know they have, will think that there's a pretty good chance that they did. And that will send them on the course of trying to root out the spy. And in doing that, you could lose all kinds of sources. If they go on a security tear right now, which any competent intelligence agency would, you have no idea who they might wrap up incorrectly, inadvertently, intentionally whatever in that process. You could lose tons of sources if they start really focusing on this.

They believe that there's a spy in their midst now because of what they read in Pete Hegseth's text that could really negatively impact all kinds of different intelligence sources on the Houthis. So in the spy movies when they're like, I need an extraction point, I've been made, that's this, that's kind of how it works. But it's frightening. It's frightening that we put at risk not just our allies, but our intelligence sources with those allies, their intelligence sources, not to mention the pilots. Now I think a lot of people are making the comparison here to, because they're saying, oh, our mission was a success.

Everything went great. So you should be quiet. You should stop complaining. But that's like saying, so everyone's making this comparison. That's like a drunk driver saying, I got home okay. Nobody got killed. So what's your problem? Right.

And that's kind of like the perfect analogy, I feel. Yeah. And like, if you think it was dumb what they did, and clearly it was, their reaction to it is mind blowing. You get these blithe statements of what's the big deal, everything worked out okay, or no, it's not classified. Yes, it is. This isn't as bad as what Biden did in pulling out of Afghanistan. How in the hell do those two things exist in the same Senate? It's like, what are we comparing here? It's the same thing Hillary did. I saw my friend, Brian Tyler Cohen on Piers Morgan

and Benny Johnson, you know, who's been paid by the Kremlin through Tenant Media, is attacking Brian Tyler Cohen saying, you know, well, what about Hillary Clinton? What about what Hillary did? You know, was that not bad? What about what Joe Biden and his mishandling of classified documents? Was that not bad? And Brian Tyler Cohen just sat there for a second and then he goes, are you asking me if careless and reckless handling of classified information is bad? Yes. Yes, it is. Do you see how easy that is? Your turn. You know, exactly. I mean, it's not the same ballpark, but yeah, it's bad. Yeah. Yeah, it's bad. And by the way, Hillary got investigated. And so did Joe Biden. And so did

Mike Pence. But I guess he's not going to be investigated. Yeah, not here. Yeah, Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled on Thursday. This is from the Times that there was unlikely to be a criminal investigation into the sharing of military operation details in an unsecured text group declaring that the specifics of when fighter jets would depart and when bombs would fall were not classified. Which is hilarious because she is currently arguing in the Venezuelan Trender Aragua deportation

case that the specific times on when commercial jets take off is definitely deserving of state secret privilege. We can't release those kinds of plans to you. She says it was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released. All of those things don't matter to the Espionage Act. It's fascinating that she hasn't been able to determine that the release was inadvertent with no investigation whatsoever.

So the way this usually works, and you can use the Hillary Clinton case as an example, the affected agency or entity in this case, it would be the national security council fills out a 10, I think it's called an eight 11 referral to the department of justice. They basically sent a letter to the department of justice saying, Hey, we had a spill or a leak of classified information or classified ended up somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. And it was big or significant or possibly intentional. And so we're referring it to DOJ. DOJ looks at it

and then they pass it along to the FBI for investigation. You could, you would investigate it because it's possible that you might find it was an intentional act and therefore criminal charges are warranted, although that is highly unlikely. Most investigations don't end that way. But you also would investigate it because part of what the FBI does is investigates potential threats to national security. It's important that you go in and make a full assessment

of like what got lost, what got spilled into the wrong system, where did it come from? Have we recovered all those devices and cleaned the information off of them so they're not still there? Can we do a cybersecurity review to see if there is an adversary on that device and do they may have it now? This is all like super important to national security, right? Not to politics, it's not about the next election.

It's about, are we still okay? Are we losing sources or methods? None of that will happen here because no referral has gone to DOJ. DOJ has not told the FBI to do anything and they of course are taking no action. It's just kind of an abysmal dereliction of duty because this is an inconvenient fact for Pam Bondi and Donald Trump and Cash Patel politically.

Yeah. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. No. That she or Cash Patel or who's the CIA now? Ratcliffe. Oh God. Sorry I asked, I remember now. That's right, God, John Ratcliffe's in charge of the CIA. Oh my God.

Anyway, yeah, none of them are gonna take accountability. I had a big discussion, few big discussions this week with a lot of different people that I interviewed for the Daily Beans. And I was like, it's so important that you just say, hey, we screwed up. That's what that form, what is it an 811 is for. Check it out. Please help us. We, you know, that's the best way to go about this.

And there's just zero, there's going to be zero, not just accountability but even just admitting that there was an error. None of that and it's very dangerous for us and our allies. And think about it like Trump who has a terrible reputation for handling sensitive information in that we found hundreds of documents in the bathroom at his club in Florida after he was no longer president, is a chance for him to actually look responsible. He could have the next day said, Mike's a good guy, but he did the wrong thing here. I have to set an example for how we handle information in this administration. I've asked for his resignation and he's given it to me.

That would look like, hey, he's really the boss, he's in charge, he's holding people accountable and this whole thing would have been done. Yeah, but he would have to admit that there was a mistake. He would have to admit that something was wrong and he's incapable. That's why he couldn't be the hero during COVID. He'd have to admit that there's COVID. Right. He can't do it.

And he cannot do it. And he can't because he's incapable. So here we are. It's like five days later, we're still talking about it. It's not going anywhere. Good. There you go do it. And you can't because it's incapable. So here we are. It's like five days later, we're still talking about it. It's not going anywhere. Good. There you go. Good.

All right. Well, we have more to get to. We're going to talk about some interesting changes in the way that the Department of Justice does handle certain cases. But we have to take a quick break first. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey everybody, welcome back. Andy, since I can remember, in the relatively rare instances,

when migrants commit crimes, relatively rare compared to naturalized citizens, for example. But when migrants do commit crimes, the Department of Justice always arrests them, prosecutes them, puts them in prison, gives them their due process. And then if they are illegally here, then they are deported after that. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. That's where the concept of a INS or ICE detainer comes from, right? So somebody commits a crime, they're put on trial just like any other person here, a citizen or anyone else here in this country. They are given all the constitutional rights that every defendant is guaranteed. And if they're convicted, they have to serve their sentence

here. And while they're serving that sentence, they put a detainer on their record, which basically says when this person's done serving their sentence, they get deported. And then they get deported after that. But there's a couple of really strange things happened this week that have caused me to wonder if we are on the brink of a massive shift

in what has been that very consistent policy from administration to administration for decades and decades. So this first came to my attention this week with the discovery that an MS-13 leader, so MS-13 is a gang in the United States, but it derives from El Salvador. And one of their leaders who had been arrested and charged with significant crimes, a guy named Cesar Humberto Lopez Larios, the top leader in NMS 13,

and he was cooperating with the United States government and providing information that possibly would have shed a negative light on the current administration in El Salvador. So very quietly, Lopez Larios, all charges against him were dropped by the Department of Justice and he was put on one of the infamous Trin de Aragua flights and was returned to El Salvador because of course those Venezuelan gang members, allegedly on those flights that have become such a legal

problem now for the, for the administration, uh, those flights were going to El Salvador, of course, not Venezuela. And this guy in the middle of a prosecution middle of cooperation, drop charges, sent him home. So that really got my attention. And then... So just a quick interjection question for you. Was he arrested under the Biden administration and had been working with Department of Justice?

I am not sure. Or was he more recently, Richie? That would make sense to me that he was, but I can't confirm that at this point. I haven't seen exactly when he was arrested in the reporting that I've reviewed. But then this week, Wednesday, we had a really weird thing here in Northern Virginia at the FBI resident agency. So it's the Washington field office. They have like a satellite office out in Northern Virginia. They had a big splashy press conference with Pam Bondi and cash Patel and the Virginia governor, Glenn Yonkin to announce the arrest of a

Salvadoran man they described as one of the top three MS 13 gang leaders in the United States. Now they had this whole press conference, you know, congratulating themselves on this arrest and never identified who was arrested. Nothing, no mention of the person or what he'd been charged with. We found out about a day later, the guy that was arrested as an individual by the name of Henry Josue Villatoro Santos, 24 years old, lives in Northern Virginia. He'd been arraigned for being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm.

It's kind of a long story, but they basically were conducting a surveillance on this guy's house. They saw him go in, they went in and grabbed him, and they have him detained basically on an immigration charge. Pam Bondi said in the press conference, he's an illegal alien here in the United States, but don't worry. He's not going to be living here for very long. So my concern is this could very well become the next person arrested in the United States who gets zero due process, who isn't actually prosecuted and forced to essentially pay for their crimes here in the United States, it is going to be shipped out to El Salvador before any of that takes

place. Now I know that a lot of people will think like, well good, these are people who shouldn't have been here anyway, they're committing crimes, why should we keep them here and pay for them in jail and feed them three hots and a cut for however many years they get to stay here in jail. Why don't we just send them back? Well, here's why it matters. Due process belongs to everyone who's in the United States, regardless of status and should have the constitutional protections thereof. Of course. And like, if we're now entering a phase where based on dubious claims of presidential authority based on war powers, we're going to now start arresting people and just throwing them on planes and sending

them to third party countries, places they don't even come from. If we can do it to people, if we can deny one person their due process rights and do it to them, they can do it to anyone. Right. So I just throw this whole storyline out there because I think it's an interesting thing. We should just kind of, if you're someone who's interested in what's actually happening in the Department of Justice and how on the ground they're changing the work that they're doing in a way that will affect Americans deeply, this is one of those topics that I think people should keep an eye on.

It is. It's super important. And I mean, because when we talk about what's going on with Judge Boasberg and the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and Trump's proclamation signed a couple of weeks ago, that's a little different here because now we're talking about migrants who have committed a crime and are entitled to the due process of the criminal due process. And now with the Boasberg stuff, we're just talking about due process as to whether or not they're even here illegally. Right. Right.

Or whether they, if they are, or if they have committed a crime, that they're entitled to the due process granted in the constitution because they were here when they were picked up. And you don't have to be a citizen to have the protection of the Constitution. You just have to be here. That's right. That's right. So now, when you talk about just putting people on a plane, I mean, the stories that are coming out now,

some of the declarations in the lawsuit before Judge Boesberg, are harrowing. One was a barber, a gay barber who had a tattoo of his favorite soccer club or a guy who had a tattoo of an autism awareness ribbon because his brother has autism. Those were the reasons for just putting them on a plane and deporting them to El Salvador. And Judge Boesberg ordered the planes turned around. And that order was blatantly ignored. And their reasoning, by the way, which they've just filed in their show cause response, but show cause is a step on the way to the contempt

train, by the way. You have to show cause why we shouldn't hold you in contempt. The Department of Justice is actually arguing, hey, we didn't violate the temporary restraining order because we were going by the written order, not what you said with your words in court. We were going by the written order that came out. And the written order doesn't say to turn the planes around. You just said that in the courthouse, from the bench verbally. So it doesn't count. And besides, once the planes were in the air already, they used their lame US versus international

airspace argument. Oh, it was already out of the written restraining order for not deporting people. You want me to return people, you just told me not to deport anyone. They were already out. And so I, Donald Trump, the king that I am under my Article 2 King powers, have, that's a decision I make on my own whether to return deportees. It's not part of your case. So you just settle down there, Mr. Judge. And that's what the Department of Justice is arguing here. But

the idea that anyone can be thrown on a plane and if they're in the air, they don't have to be brought back and they don't know one has to answer for why they left in the first place is extremely frightening. Yeah. So your constitutional rights comes down to a foot race. Right. If they get you on a plane quick enough and get you far enough in the air and a few miles offshore, you don't have any rights. That's absurd. I think Trump is trying to say once wheels are up basically, because anything else isn't a deportation order, it's a return order. And that's not under the proclamation. They actually take this into court.

They're going to have to reckon with a decades and decades long history of arresting people overseas, of returning terrorists to the United States for the purpose of prosecution. And all every step of that process, I know, because I've done it several times, you have to, you have to abide by the constitutional guarantees, the due process guarantees that that person is entitled to. So if you put someone on a plane in Libya and you bring them back to New York, to the Southern district to face charges, you have to get them here in a certain

amount of time and get them in front of a judge to be arraigned in a certain amount of time, because these are all parts of their rights as a defendant. Once they are in U S in US custody, we acknowledge those things. And so a bunch of deportees on a US provided jet surrounded by US security agents. In US custody. In US custody, who seemed to me would bring the same level of protection. And not to mention, there's another issue here about these MS-13 guys. If you really think these MS-13 guys have done bad things, they should be tried here and convicted here and forced to pay for those crimes in the United States

of America. You send them back to wherever, you have no assurance that they'll even be kept in prison there. They could be back here in a week. Yep. That's, that's crazy. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to keep an eye on both of these cases. Oh, and just to like a little fun side note, Boasberg also luck of the draw spun the wheel and got assigned the lawsuit against Pete Hegseth for Signalgate. So he's going to get to hear arguments from the DOJ saying, absolutely not. Flight times and bombs and stuff like that, not classified. But commercial charter jet tail number flight times that were shared

on the internet by Marco Rubio, totally classified. Total national. We get state secret privilege. It seems like every six months I learn about a new privilege that people use to invoke to not have to hand over information. State secret privilege is interesting. It's awesome. I don't mean that like it's totally cool. I mean like it's very powerful. It's basically the government's ability to obliterate a lawsuit simply because it will do damage to national security is very rarely invoked. But maybe not anymore. Well, they do have to satisfy the court that it is appropriate. And Judge Boasberg was already skeptical in his filings. He's like, really? But you posted all of this stuff on

the internet. You've talked about how many people stuff on the internet. You've talked about how many people were on the planes. You've talked about flight times. You've talked about flight numbers. You've talked about where they ended up. You talked about what happened when they got there. All of you did. So I'm really skeptical about your state secrets privilege. But we'll see.

We'll see how he rules on that. I think they'll be fully briefed by March 31st on that show cause with the plaintiff's response to what the DOJ handed in. That's due just here in a couple of days or no tomorrow. It's due tomorrow. All right. We have to take another quick break, but we're going to talk about some more shuffling around and rearranging things at the FBI. But we, like I said, have to take this break. So stick around.

We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay. Our next story comes from Reuters. The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations in a shift that could undermine law enforcement's ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The moves, sources said, are an indication that domestic terrorism investigations, which in recent years have largely involved violence fueled by right-wing ideologies, may be less of a priority under the FBI director Cash Patel, a prominent critic of that effort. A prominent friend of white supremacists. A prominent guest on multiple white supremacist podcasts? I mean... Speaker of white supremacist conventions? I mean...

Now, according to Reuters, some of the sources said the changes will reduce the FBI's ability to monitor threats posed by white supremacists and militia groups and potentially hamper law enforcement's ability to disrupt plots. The move comes despite repeated warnings from US officials in recent years that domestic violent extremists present some of the most significant security threats in the United States today. Quote, there is a broader desire, I think, within the administration to at best ignore data, put their head in the sand, and at worst to realign resources away from the battle. That's what Jacob Ware said, an expert on domestic terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations. FBI leadership recently transferred agents and intelligence analysts from its domestic

terrorism operations section, which by the way is only referred to as DTOS inside the FBI, domestic terrorism operations section, which supports investigations run out of the FBI's 56 field offices and provides information on domestic threats, according to five sources briefed on the moves. Two sources familiar with the changes said about 16 people had been reassigned from the section, which would have hundreds of employees if fully staffed. A different source said that senior FBI officials have discussed disbanding it entirely, though a final decision has not yet been announced. Hmm. The FBI has also discontinued a practice of tagging investigations with a connection entirely, though a final decision has not yet been announced.

The FBI has also discontinued a practice of tagging investigations with a connection to domestic terrorism, according to two sources. The tags were an important tool in helping the Bureau identify trends and track relevant probes across the country. The Trump administration has separately directed the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which we've talked about before, that the task forces investigate domestic and international terrorist threats to assist in Trump's immigration crackdown. And that's according to a memo seen by Reuters. I think we reported on that a couple of weeks ago.

Yep. The changes come as the Trump administration has said it will treat attacks at Tesla dealerships and charging stations as domestic terrorism, an effort nearly certain to involve FBI investigators. Well, apparently they're not giving up all of the DT work. Protests have erupted in recent weeks against Tesla CEO Elon Musk for his leading role in Trump's effort to slash the federal government. At least three people have been accused in separate cases of using Molotov cocktails

to set fire to Tesla property. My gosh. The FBI stepped up its focus on domestic terrorism following the killing of a counter-protester at the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters kicked those efforts into high gear. The FBI said in 2023, in a report that they issued that it had about 2700 active domestic terrorism investigations,

2700, about half of which were related to the Capitol riot, up from roughly 1000 in 2020. So, Andy, you have experience with detas, yeah? Oh yeah. So terrorism breaks out into international terrorism and domestic terrorism, right? And international terrorism is not just things that happen overseas. It's like it could be terrorist attacks or planning and things that are happening here in the United States, but by people who are affiliated with or inspired by international groups like Al Qaeda and Hamas or what have you. Then there's domestic terrorism, which is in many ways much harder to investigate because there are the restrictions of the

first amendment make investigating domestic terrorism very sensitive, right? Because by definition you're investigating people who are engaged in political activity, political speech here inside the United States. So that's different than investigating a foreign group that's been designated as an enemy of the United States, a terrorist organization by the State Department. In any case, DTOS was where all those domestic terrorism investigations took place.

Starting in about 2018, so before January 6th, the FBI saw a huge tilt in the number of terrorism cases that led to arrests from foreign, international terrorism cases, which always outnumbered domestic cases by a strong margin, all of a sudden those numbers started shifting as DT, the DT threat picture got worse and worse and worse in 2018, 2017, 2018, 2019. And then of course we know what happened on January 6th. So DTOS been very busy and had been receiving resources over the last couple of years. This is a really concerning development in the FBI.

If you are watering down and minimizing the allocation of people to that headquarters group, DTAS, it's going to be reflected in less work happening in the field across the domestic terrorism program. And it shows a deprioritization of that work, which is, this is a really, really bad time to do that. Yeah, and domestic terrorism, especially white supremacists and extremist groups, militia groups,

don't just negatively impact Democrats when they do bad things. Of course not. We had that one group that was foiled by, I think, detossed at FBI that was trying to take down, shoot down some sort of an energy plant or something like that, some kind of power station. Yep. or something like that, some kind of power station. Yeah. We've had, I mean, like all, like there's innumerable plots that have been thwarted by domestic terrorists and white supremacy groups

that we'll never know about, but that are probably now gonna start popping up. You know, the domestic terrorism like threat picture encompasses all kinds of things. So yeah, there's a lot of other groups too. There are left-leaning groups. There are groups that are engaged in terrorism for environmental reasons. Groups, historically we've had groups

that engage in terrorism, ostensibly to protect animals, animal rights extremists. You look back at Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols who notoriously blew up the Alfred P. Muir federal building in Oklahoma City. That was kind of like the real eye opening moment for the FBI on the DT side.

So there's a lot of dangerous stuff going on there. DTOS is the section at headquarters that coordinates all of that activity. That is not something that you wanna turn off. And I should say too about the Elon Musk thing. If people are going out there and vandalizing Tesla dealerships and charging stations for political reasons,

that would likely fit the statutory definition of domestic terrorism. There is a definition in the federal criminal law, it's 2331 section five, and that's how we know officially whether something is considered to be domestic terrorism or not. What the definition does not have is a criminal penalty.

There is no crime of domestic terrorism. So DT subjects, once investigated, can be charged with violating other things like other federal crimes. Well, we saw this with the Oath Keepers. Exactly. They were charged with seditious conspiracy and they got a DT bump in the sentencing memo. Yeah, there you go.

Domestic terrorism. The judge, and the judge has to accept it as domestic terrorism by the definitions under what, 2331 you said? Yep. And if that all goes forward, which it did in this case, in those cases and the Proud Boys cases and and several other cases that were related to that, to those groups said yeah this is we're gonna go forward with the domestic terrorism charge or enhancement. The sentencing enhancement and it works on the IT and DT side, but yeah, this is a it's very very careful work. It's very

Nuance, there's a it's like a it's like a buffet DT side there's all kinds of groups. There's new ones every day sometimes they get together and work together and Show up in the same places and cause mayhem together even if their ideologies aren't perfectly aligned So yeah, it's a bad. It's a bad time to be getting rid of all your DT experts Yeah, yeah, definitely and something that's not gonna help Alina Habba 41 year old native of summit who now lives in Bernard'sville

Rose to fame and controversy during Trump's period out of office when the president enlisted large teams of lawyers to defend him from a number of criminal charges filed against him. Haba became known as one of the most aggressive, quote unquote, members of Trump's team. Even earning reprimands from the judge overseeing one of her cases, I think she got hit with a million dollar sanctions fine too. Yeah, yeah. In a lawsuit that you were named in.

Yep, that's correct. So the rolled in last long, um, Trump announced in a social media post at the beginning of this week, Habba will become New Jersey's interim top prosecutor replacing John Giordano, a Philadelphia lawyer who'd been there for just three weeks. Now he's on his way to become the ambassador of Namibia instead. And I think that he was replacing somebody that was there for a short time too. Right? State son of Senator Doug Steinhart, uh, Trump's initial pick for U S attorney before that guy said, no way, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to be the New Jersey guy.

So one guy said, no thanks. The next guy said, I'll take Namibia over New Jersey. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so now here it is Alina Haba. So she was actually the third choice. She's third down on the dance card here for Donald Trump. I'm sure she revels in that third place win. And we'll see. We'll see how this goes. Obviously, we're going to follow her just like we're going to follow Mr. Ed Martin. And we're going to talk about him in the next segment right before we take listener questions, which happens right after this break. Stick

around. We'll be right back. Welcome back, AJ. I gotta just stop you here before we move on to Ed Martin because we missed what I thought was the most interesting aspect of the Alina Haba story. And that is she implied that she may not have originally wanted to take the job. Quote, I don't want to leave the White House. It makes me sad. You know what, Alina? The White House makes me sad too. Does Habba have a sad? What did the MAGA folks always say about your feelings? I can't remember. It wasn't good though. No, I think it rhymed with truck. Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sounds great Well Andy it wouldn't be unjustified without an update on interim US attorney in DC Ed Martin awesome And this is like a theme for this section of the show. I know we'll write a little jingle or something But this one comes from MSNBC. It's a Jehan Jones He says interim US attorney Ed Martin has been having a rough go at things since Trump picked him for January 6th defendants who on the day of the attack tweeted that he was at the Capitol and relayed love, faith and joy at the scene since Trump picked him to serve as the top federal prosecutor in D.C. And so Jahan Jones wrote last month too for MSNBC about Martin's rage over media leaks, apparently coming from staffers in his office. But you know, signal chat's fine. And this week, he

received a fierce backlash during an appearance that he made in one of the blackest communities in DC. That's right. The Washingtonian magazine published a dispatch from Martin's trip to Anacostia, a neighborhood that is nearly 90% black, for a discussion with local leaders about crime. On its face, this appearance seemed ripe for controversy, given that Martin is a staunch supporter of the insurrectionists who waged a Ku Klux Klan-style attack on the Capitol with gallows and all.

And apparently, Martin's disconnect from the attendees was glaringly obvious. According to The Washingtonian, he made an attempt to drive a wedge between Anacostia residents and Africans who have benefited from foreign aid. And that, amazingly, did not go over well. Why would you? All right, so this is actually from the Washingtonian. Clearly a back-slapping friendly person by nature, he began his appearance with a somewhat conciliatory tone, telling the crowd quote, you're the experts on what's happening in the community and name dropping the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

as commemorating one of the great historic folks. Okay. But he struggled to keep awkward. Okay, but he struggled to keep... Awkward. Yeah. He's a great historic folk. Good old Frederick Douglass. He struggled to keep it relatable. A few minutes in, he brought up the embattled USAID in what he clearly thought was a slam dunk.

He said, when USAID sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Central Africa, didn't you ask, why didn't you send it to the seventh district? There was immediate and resounding no from the crowd. And then he said, you didn't? Well, you should, I did. A few minutes, I mean, that's like, just a few minutes into this. He already pulls that out. Yeah, so a few minutes later, Cora Masters Barry,

Marion Barry's widow, took issue, giving Martin the most severe dressing down of the day. Quote, you need to learn your politics, she said. You need to learn geography and world affairs. There's a whole different pot of money that goes to Africa that stops diseases. You don't know what you're talking about. So be careful about what you say when you go places

because you show that you're not well read. No. Oh. Ouch. This is Barry. Well done. Yeesh. Barry also pointed out that Martin, in his focus on crime,

ignored the fact that DC had already made progress. Quote, you haven't once mentioned Metropolitan Police Department, she said. You haven't talked about the chief of police who's doing a great job of bringing crime down. So you can't sit there and talk about what you're gonna do as if something's not being done already. What you gotta do is walk in and you say,

what's being done and how can I help? She reportedly received applause when she advised Martin to quote, be careful how you talk to us. Yeah, good advice, really good advice. Yeah, wow, that's not good. Hey, I ran the Washington field office for a while. I went out and did a lot of appearances that sound kind of like this, so they didn't go the way this one went.

The purpose for getting out in the community is to listen. You show up and you hear what people have to say and you try to answer questions the best that you can, but really you're there to listen, not to tell them what to do and how to think about things. Like that's not going to go well. Yeah. And that's what Quora Master's Barry said. You're supposed to show up and you're supposed to ask what's going on and how can I help? Yeah. That's what you do. Yeah. Follow on.

That's what you do. Follow on. All right. Thank you for that story, MSNBC and the Washingtonian. Let's get to listener questions. By the way, if you have a question for Andy or I or me, is it if you have a question for Andy or me, you can send that to us by clicking on the link in the show notes and filling out the form. And when we'll see if we can read it on the air.

What do we have this week, Andy? All right, so I picked these two because like, it was odd this week, people were directing their questions to either me or you it's like a real a real thing a theme happened in this week so so this one this first one comes to us from PJ and PJ says hi frontliners thanks as always for keeping it real and fact-based my question is for Allison regarding the operations of independent media i'm curious what if anything is being done by the growing library of invaluable independent media, I'm curious what, if anything, is being done

by the growing library of invaluable independent media operations to band together and speak with one voice against the pressures that will inevitably come from this administration, if they aren't already. Is there such an organization or legal affiliation that is creating something of a bulwark for this incredibly important function? If not, do you have ideas about how to form such an alliance? Thanks so much. Ah, great question, PJ. Yes, we're all friends.

That works. You know, we jump on Zoom calls all the time. We had one this week about messaging on the signal app debacle. Because, you know, we started to notice that the right wing noise machine all have the same talking points and they get them fast. So whenever a news story breaks like this, we all jump on a call and talk about the messaging in five, 10 minute call just so that we can get it all together. Right. And so we are constantly communicating with one another informally, not through any general organization, although chorus helps a lot. I know Tristan Snell is

putting together something that's got more of a structure to it. But the fact remains, we're all just have each other's phone numbers. We're all buddies. And we talk to each other about how we're going to message things and so that we can coordinate it and put the best messaging forward. So yeah, I mean, it's not exactly like I said, like a technical organization. It's just that we all understand the urgency of any importance of messaging and we talk to each other on a regular basis. So maybe you'll be happy to hear that. That's awesome. That's awesome. And like you came, the importance of independent media cannot be denied, particularly at this moment.

Like, um, there it's, it's spent, it's reach is growing every day as people shift to things like podcasts and, and other stuff. And also you can't be threatened, right? Not the same way that the big media companies can media companies who, who live and die by the, by the FCC license that keeps big media companies can. Media companies who live and die by the FCC license that keeps them on the air. That is a pretty big card that so far, I haven't heard the administration hanging that over anyone's head, but I have no doubt it's going to happen eventually. No, it is nice. And just today, Daily Beans, unjustified MSW media filed a lawsuit against

Doge because they failed to respond to a FOIA request that I sent out in February. So that's hit the docket in the Northern District. We're suing with First Amendment Coalition and we're also being represented by national security counselors, Kel McClanahan. So because I don't have the Donald Trump threatening to take away my FCC license or whatever, I'm able to do things like this. That's awesome, good work. All right, our next question,

which I have neglected to bring the name from, but you will recognize yourself if this is your question, begins, hi, Alison and Andrew, thank you both so much for keeping us informed during these dark times. I have two questions for Andrew. Begins, hi, Alison and Andrew, thank you both so much for keeping us informed during these dark times. I have two questions for Andrew. All right, here we go. First, you've often said that if somebody in the FBI

is being told to do things that violate their conscience, they should consider resigning. Apart from preserving one's own mental health, are there any benefits to resigning versus staying on board, disobeying their directives and being fired? Second, once this is all over, is it going to take a lot of,

it is going to take a lot of work to rebuild the FBI, not only from a personal standpoint, but also restoring all the longstanding rules and procedures that are being thrown by the wayside. You envision that this is an effort you would be willing to help them with when the time comes. All right, that's two tough ones. First question, there's no

benefit to FBI employees to like stick around and drag their feet and not perform well in the hopes of getting fired. There's no benefit to getting fired, I can tell you that pretty straight-forward. Or just refusing to do the illegal thing that Trump is asking you to do. Yeah. And then staying and then having them fire you. I think it's worse to be fired for you and your family than it is to resign. There's a lot of downsides to being fired.

And yeah, that's the biggest part of it. So I also think there is a benefit to knowing when it's time for you to go. Like nobody in any job anywhere should be forced to do things that are not consistent with their morals and their ethics and their values. And when that time comes that you just cannot stomach it, then maybe it's time to go. You could do good, keep doing good work until that moment. Keep following your North Star and living up to your oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America. But when the day comes where you feel like you just cannot do it anymore, it's still

a hard thing to do to walk away because you're cutting yourself short in terms of your career goals and your pension and all that stuff, but that might be the time to do it. As far as rebuilding the FBI. Yeah, I was gonna say let's say Democrat gets back in in 2029 and they call up, they pick up the phone and say, Hey, Andy, we could use some help rebuilding the FBI. Do you remember the rules? Because we they just they they everything, they put it in burn bags. So any help reconstructing our great bureau would be appreciated.

What say you? Well, first, I don't think that's ever gonna happen. I think, I bring too much controversy with me to be too attractive to anyone, but I will say this. I've said it before and I still mean it. Um, I love that organization and I love the work that they do. And most importantly, I love the people who were there doing it. And the ones who used to be there and worked with me and the

ones they'll hire in the future. So they're real, that would be a really hard thing to turn down. So, um, yeah, I don't anticipate that that's going to happen, but I would never say no to the FBI. Oh, I got a little choked up there. You're not the only one. A little over-clempt. Thank you for your questions. Please, again, if you have a question for Andy or me, you

click on the link in the show notes and it'll take you right to a form you can fill out. And we are happy to try to answer them the best we can on the air. Your questions are always so thoughtful. And I'm just always like daily blown away by our listeners, their intelligence, their aptitude, their curiosity. So please send those questions in. We love answering them. We love reading them. Do you have anything you want to end on today? Boy, this week has really been,

it's been one hard week after another, but this one has just been like out of the blue crazy. With all the things that we learned about the Signal Chat and everything else, it's hard to envision like, my gosh, where are we going to be seven days from now? So, yeah, I don't know. I'm just trying to get through it like everybody else. And as things happen during the week, I kind of make these mental checks and reminders to myself to try to bring it up.

But boy, we struggle, right? We try to get this thing done in an hour or thereabouts and there's a lot to talk about. But we'll try to do it again all for you next week. Yeah, we'll see you then. Until then, I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hockey with art and web design by Joel Reeder at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben

Folds. And the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcasts dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWMedia.com.